by Jeff Gluck, USA TODAY Sports

by Jeff Gluck, USA TODAY Sports

SONOMA, Calif. â?? Danica Patrick has raced at Sonoma seven times â?? but never in NASCAR.

Still, it stands to reason that her familiarity with road courses and Sonoma Raceway in particular would carry over from her IndyCar days to this weekend's Sprint Cup Series race at the twisting 1.99-mile track.

Even Patrick thought that would be the case. She has three top-10 finishes at the track, from 2005-2011.Unfortunately for her, it hasn't turned out that way so far.

"I had hoped being here before would make it better for me out there, but it didn't," Patrick said Friday after recording just the 31st-fastest time in practice.

She chuckled half-heartedly to further reflect her disappointment.

"The car just doesn't feel very good," she said, noticeably subdued. "It just feels like it's all over the place. It's loose, it's tight, it's loose, it's tight. It just doesn't feel very settled. I feel like we just have a lot of work to do."

Patrick said her Stewart-Haas Racing team is struggling even to get the car comfortable enough to drive. She said the differences between an open-wheel car and a stock car on the road courses were "like night and day."

Was it more difficult to adjust to Sonoma because she'd driven a different type of car here in the past? Patrick wouldn't use that as an excuse.

Yes, she had to re-learn the braking points for each corner. But she also already knew the course layout, which could be an advantage for a rookie.

"I kept going through Turns 3 and 3A and thinking to myself, 'Is it because I'm doing it like I did in IndyCar that I'm terrible through here and I can't get the car to turn?'" she said. "But overall, it's nice to know where you're going."

In last week's Michigan race, Patrick got her first top-15 finish since the April 7 race at Martinsville (and her third of the season in 15 starts). She called it "overdue" because of the team's potential and overall speed.

"It's a bit of a relief to just get something of a result, finally," she said. "It took awhile."

But if Patrick is going to get another respectable finish this weekend, she and her team have much work to do.